Stain
by svuxfanfic
Summary: "In all his years of knowing Amanda Rollins, he could count the number of tears she had shed on one hand. The woman falling to pieces before him on the bedroom floor was a being entirely encompassed by grief, like a pain so thorough in its destruction had crept inside and altered her very chemical makeup." One-shot, takes place during the events of Forgiving Rollins.


When he found her on the bedroom floor, she had her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her fingers desperately clutching the neck of a half empty beer bottle. In a telling display of her despair, a small barricade of empty glass bottles surrounded her on the carpet, like a wall intended to block out the rest of the world. She was shaking. He could tell that much even from where he stood against the harsh backlight in the doorway. Nervously, he cleared his throat.

"I, uh, used the spare you gave me. I hope that's okay," he dangled the small key ring on his outstretched finger, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. She didn't.

"Amanda?" He risked a step in her direction, "I was worried when you rushed out of there like that, I just wanted to come see how you were doing. I know that you have some rough history with your old chief, and-"

"You know _nothing_ ," she suddenly hissed from her frozen position on the floor, not even moving so much as to meet his eyes, "Don't talk about him, about _me,_ like you have any clue."

He watched the blood drain from her knuckles as she tightened her grip around the glass, and he knew that it would probably be smart to heed her warning and back off. But either he was feeling lucky tonight or his sense of self preservation was overshadowed by his concern for her well being. Either way, he tucked the key into his front pocket and walked the rest of the way into the room, stopping to sink down beside her at the foot of the bed. For a few minutes, they simply stared off into two separate spots in the distance, their soft breathing falling in and out of sync. They had been here so many times before, in that very bedroom, discussing Maria and Kim and gambling and children and sometimes not doing much discussing at all, but never had he felt such a great divide in the air between them. All mutual jadedness aside, he could tell this was one piece of her darkness that bore a particularly gruesome stain.

"Well, you've got me there," he admitted, absently twisting one of the empty bottles between his fingers, "I don't have any clue. Because, contrary to the popular belief of every female in my life, I don't actually have the ability to read minds."

Her posture stiffened, fist tightening again in his peripherals, and he winced apologetically. This was going well.

"Sorry," he murmured, letting the bottle drop to the carpet with a soft thud, "I'm sorry."

Amanda closed her eyes and threw back another long swig of alcohol, though at this point, the delicious burn had faded to nothing more than a dull splash of numbness. Nick chewed at his bottom lip feebly, searching for the right thing to say. Amanda wasn't exactly an open vessel of communication, and his rapidly onset case of foot-in-mouth disease wasn't going to help matters any. _Think positively,_ he reminded himself, _At least she hasn't thrown you out on your face yet. That's progress._

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Does it _look_ like I want to talk about it?" She snapped.

Nope. It did not.

"Point taken."

Silence. If she didn't want to talk, he hoped she would at least listen. He took a deep breath.

"You know none of us believed a word of it, right? Patton, I mean. What he said about... your history with him? We know you better than that."

"Mmm," she chuckled humorlessly, her eyes glazing over with something dark, "Do you, now?"

"Yes, we do," he insisted, glancing over so she could see the sincerity in his eyes, "Patton's a liar. We all knew what he was up to. Trying to dirty you up so you lost your credibility."

Nick thought he caught a momentary glimpse of something akin to sorrow flash behind her eyes, maybe even a glisten of moisture, before she settled her stony features once again, turning slightly away from him.

"He didn't have to do much," her voice was flat and empty, "I think I made that job pretty easy on him."

At this, Nick took a mental step back, narrowing his eyes in confusion.

"No, Amanda," he shook his head, reaching out for her hand. She immediately yanked it away from his reach, swiping once across her cheek.

"Yes, Nick," She snapped back at him, her slurred words raising in volume, "You don't understand."

"Understand what?" he turned to her, "All I understand is that Patton's a liar and probably a rapist, and he's going to say whatever he can to get away with it."

Resigned, she shook her head, averting her eyes to the carpet that was now splattered with small splotches beer. She hoped it wouldn't stain.

"You don't understand," she repeated, this time in a barely audible whisper, "What he said about me… he was telling the truth."

Nick blinked. Surely he had misheard her. Surely, Amanda Rollins wasn't defending this guy, the same guy of which she had made her distaste well known. And most certainly, she wasn't confessing to being that doe-eyed girl who climbed the office food chain by batting her eyelashes and throwing herself at any man of authority who looked her way. She may not be the poster child for self love, but surely she respected herself more than that.

"I...what?"

Amanda swallowed hard, keeping her eyes focused on the yellow-brown splotches through the blur of welling tears. Blinking once, she watched as two droplets splashed to the floor to mingle with the spilled alcohol.

"What he said about me in that interrogation with Dodds," she clenched her jaw and closed her eyes, "It wasn't entirely a lie."

She waited for a moment, her heart seizing in her chest at the terror of purging the one confession she had kept locked up inside for the past five years. She couldn't look at him, couldn't bear to face him when she exposed the ugliest truth she had ever known. As the words rose in her throat (or was that vomit?), she felt her lip begin to tremble, and before she could gain control, her entire facade broke in a mess of anguished sobs. Strangled sounds that she barely recognized as her own poured from her throat as her shoulders heaved from the effort.

Nick was utterly dumbfounded. In all his years of knowing Amanda Rollins, he could count the number of tears she had shed on one hand. The woman falling to pieces before him on the bedroom floor was a being entirely encompassed by grief, like a pain so thorough in its destruction had crept inside and altered her very chemical makeup. His heart shattered.

He reached out for her. "Amanda, I-"

"Don't," she raised a finger to stop him, wiping furiously at her eyes with the other hand, "Just… wait. Just let me say what I have to say."

Swallowing hard, Nick nodded. He wasn't sure what he was about to hear, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to hear it. Shakily pushing a blonde strand of hair from her forehead, she drew in an uneven breath.

"He was telling the truth about my sister. About what I…" she clenched her eyes shut, unconsciously pulling her legs tighter into her chest, "What I offered him in exchange for her pardon. And I knew, I _knew_ it was wrong on every level, but she was family. She was young and scared and… anyway, I knew it was wrong. That's why, when it actually came down to it, I backed out. I said no. It felt disgusting and horrible and… We worked for special victims unit, for God's sake. I was even considering turning him in, naive as I was, for propositioning me in the first place."

"So why didn't you?" Nick spoke up, his stomach churning at the the whole thing, at the idea of Amanda doing something so self destructive for the sake of her lowlife sister.

"Because," her eyes darkened as she wrapped her arms around herself protectively, "That night, I learned that Chief Patton was capable of much more than crossing professional boundaries."

Nick wasn't a stupid man. He was a man who had spent the past four years of his life working with women who faced the worst darkness life had to offer. That was all the experience he needed to know exactly what her words implied. Instantly, the ball of nausea inflated to twice its size in the pit of his stomach, the urge to either break something or cry overwhelming him.

"Amanda," he whispered, his face contorting to reflect the anguish in his heart, "I'm so sorry."

This time, she didn't resist when he reached for her hand, instead allowing him to lace his fingers between hers as their hands rested on the carpet between them. A silent reassurance. A whisper of promise amidst mutual helplessness.

"That's the real reason I came to New York looking for change," she confessed into the open air between them, "Somehow, word got around that I was the office slut back in Atlanta. I hate that word. Funny how it gets assigned to the woman who turned down both propositions from her bosses. I guess it never really mattered in the end. They were going to say and do what they wanted either way. I never really had a choice."

"Did you ever tell anyone the truth?" Nick's voice cracked, and he suspected he already knew the answer.

"Do you really think that would have mattered?" she chuckled once, darkly, "I just wanted to move on. Forget. Pretend it never happened."

He bit his cheek. No, it probably wouldn't have mattered. Nick had been in the game long enough to know how it worked, how corruption was rampant and cover-ups were rationed among those in high authority. The ghost of the little blonde woman from southern Georgia, her former self, never stood a chance.

"I'm going to kill him," Nick practically growled, feeling his muscles tense at the mental images her story had provoked, "When I see him tomorrow, I'm going to-"

"Nick, please," she sighed, shutting him down with a sound of utter exhaustion as she wiped away the last of her tears, "Not this. Not now. Don't go all macho-protective on me tonight. Please? Just don't."

His eyes danced over hers, taking in the devastation, the defeat he found there. He wished more than anything he could take it all away. He and Amanda had never quite solidified the boundaries of their relationship-non-relationship, but there was never a question of how much they cared for each other. Undefined as it may be, there was something there in his heart for her, and he tormented over her pain.

"You're right," he shook his head to clear away the demons, "I'm sorry. I… What do you need? Anything."

Resting her head against the foot of the bed, she chewed her lip. Finally, she stared up at the ceiling blankly and named her request.

"Don't tell Liv."

"Okay."

"And don't tell Finn."

"Okay."

"I mean it, Nick."

He squeezed her hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of her knuckles.

"I promise. I won't tell a soul," he assured her, "Come here."

He rolled the collection of bottles aside, taking her hand and pulling her in until she was flush against his side. Surprising both of them, she collapsed into his embrace, allowing herself, if only for a moment, to rest her weary head on his shoulder as he stroked her hair in long, even strides. A few minutes passed, and she began to feel the full effect of the alcohol as the adrenaline faded. Nick watched silently as her eyes began to drift shut. As he studied the crease in her brow that knitted her expression with pain, he thought back on the past year, on watching her grapple with gambling and drinking and guilt over Lewis and pain over her sister. She had lashed out and pushed boundaries with just about everyone in the squad, but it suddenly made so much sense, each painful piece of the puzzle falling into place. Five years of repression had taken its toll on her.

Nick laid his cheek to rest upon the top of her head, and just as his own eyes began to flutter to a close, her small voice poked up from the silence.

"Nick? One more thing," she spoke, "Tomorrow, when I'm sober enough to feel regret… This never happened."

He frowned at her from out of her line of sight, pulling her in a little closer.

"Okay."

Just before her eyes fell shut again, she found herself staring blankly at the carpet once more. The largest splotch of drying beer drew in her focus, a physical reminder of the mess she had exposed today. She had spilled over the edge and left her mark against the plain white canvas for the world to see. She could tell Nick to forget it and keep the secret contained, but just like the stains in her bedroom floor, there was no hiding when morning came.


End file.
